Antisemitic Rant Causes Red Faces at Islamic Confab

Washington — Efforts to bring together Jewish and Muslim communities hit another snag when an imam at a major Muslim conference gave an incendiary speech in which he said Jews were to blame for the Holocaust.

The speech came during the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, which was attended by rabbis who have been trying to build closer relations between Muslims and Jews.

At one of the conference’s 70 sessions, Warith Deen Umar, a New York imam, spoke critically of Jews, saying that the Holocaust happened to the Jews “because they were serially disobedient to Allah.” He also said that a small handful of Jews around President Obama “control the world.” ISNA immediately condemned the tenor of the comments. This was enough for some of the Jewish figures in attendance, but not enough for the Jewish terrorism hunter who brought the comments to light.

The divide comes in the context of a broader debate in the Jewish community about how far to go in dialogue with Islamic groups. One strong view has been presented by Steve Emerson, head of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and a skeptic when it comes to close ties between Jewish groups and the major American Muslim organizations.

http://www.forward.com/articles/109594/

Unfortunate incident but the dialogue needs to continue.

Yeah, the dialogue needs to continue, but next time, leave out the Islamic equivalent of FReepers.

See also: Queer Allies: Muslims align with Conservatives who hate them

The Massachusetts Supreme Court decision to legalize homosexual marriage in the Bay state re-ignited the culture wars. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, perhaps the preeminent liberal Jewish organization in Washington, DC, applauded the ruling. Religious-minded conservatives, however, were horrified. They are determined to stop the gay rights movement in its tracks. At what price?

JewishWorldReview.com has discovered that prominent religious conservatives — Jews, Catholics and Evangelical Christians — are allied with a radical Islamic group to stop gay marriage. Pushing a constitutional amendment that would restrict marriage to heterosexuals, they work with the Islamic Society of North America. What is ISNA? According to terrorism expert Steve Emerson, ISNA:


* has held fundraisers for terrorists (e.g., after Hamas leader Musa Marzuk was arrested, it raised money for his defense, claiming he was innocent and not connected to terrorism)

* has condemned US seizure of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad assets in the United States after 9/11

* has consistently sponsored speakers at their conferences that defend Islamic terrorists. Recently, a leader denied in an interview with an NBC affiliate that ISNA took any Saudi money but that was a brazen lie as evidenced by a recording of an ISNA conference in which it was revealed that money came from Saudi Arabia.

"ISNA," says Emerson, "is a radical group hiding under a false veneer of moderation."

More:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1203/marriage_terrorists.php3


Also:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1274076#1274206